


your name tastes sweet in my mouth

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Name Changes, Synaesthesia, idk really what this is, kind of a little bit magical realism I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4921948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Coulson says "Skye", he tastes milk chocolate, sweet and smooth and rich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your name tastes sweet in my mouth

Phil died. Something happened in his head, while he died. This he knows.

He doesn't understand  _why_ , or how, or (seriously,  _how_ , if he was only dead for eight seconds) but something happened, and now he has a scar right through him, and a blank space in his head, and taste blooming in his mouth every time he says someone's name.

He doesn't tell anyone. It'll pass, maybe, or maybe it won't, but it's just wires crossed in his head. He doesn't  _mind_. He'll take life even with a side of strange, thanks.

(It's not even the strangest thing that's happened to him. He was stabbed with a cosmic scepter by an alien god. Names tasting sweet in his mouth? Practically normal.)

It's only new names that taste like anything. Fury and Hill leave nothing at all, and neither does May. Coulson's a little sad about that. May's been a friend for long enough he'd like to know what his brain invents for her. 

( _Audrey_ , he tries, and it's nothing but the taste of his own regret.)

Still, though, building a team means new people, new things for his brain to make snap identifications about, and it's interesting, the way it happens.  _FitzSimmons_  are like the scent of rosemary and lemons warm in the sunshine, and it's simple and clean and pleasant. He's glad to have them on the team.  _Mike Peterson_ is peanut butter cookies, fresh from the oven, and the taste stays with Coulson all the way through their confrontation in Union Station.  _Deathlok_ tastes like metal, and Coulson wonders if that's because it's not a name Mike chose willingly.  _Agent Peterson_ , he says instead, and that's better. 

 

 

And then, and then, there's  _Skye_. The first time Coulson says "Skye", he tastes milk chocolate, sweet and smooth and rich, just a little vanilla. It's better than any candy bar he's ever eaten, and it's so  _vivid_ , the clearest taste he's ever gotten. "Skye," he says again, and his mouth is full of it, and it's perfect (Skye is perfect). Even when he's angry with her, even when she betrays the team, her name is sweet in his mouth. When she pulls him out of the Tahiti machine, he swims back to consciousness, breathing  _Skye_ ,  _Skye_ ,  _Skye_ , and he can taste chocolate so strong he wonders if she'd taste it too, if she leaned in to kiss it from his mouth.

 _Skye_ , he says again and again like a litany when she's dying, and his mouth fills up with the taste of chocolate too sweet on his tongue. It feels like it's mocking him. He thinks he'll never be able to eat chocolate again.

She dies, and then she lives, and Phil wonders if her name will taste different now, but when he exhales it like a benediction, it's milk chocolate as rich as ever. (He wonders, too, whether something happened in Skye's head to make her taste things the way he does, but he doesn't ask, and she doesn't say.)

 

 

 _Grant Ward_  doesn't taste like anything, not even an echo, and Coulson doesn't remember meeting him before Maria pulled his file (before he died), but they've both been in SHIELD for long enough that it's entirely possible.

Later, much later, in Providence, Coulson will see Skye's message scratched into the wall panel, and watch her walk hand-in-hand out of the base with a murderer, and when he says  _Ward's Hydra_ , his mouth floods with bitter almonds, sickly sweet and poisonous, a taste that lingers for hours. It makes him want to retch, to rinse his mouth out, but that doesn't help. It stays stubbornly on his tongue, and it's not until Skye's safe, sitting across the table from him and looking calm and thoughtful and  _alive_ , that the taste finally fades.

He passes her half his candy bar, and she smiles, and the Hershey bar he's eating isn't what's filling his mouth with the flavor of milk chocolate.  _Skye_ , he'd whispered to himself, and she's always been milk chocolate, on his tongue.

 

 

 _Cal_ , when they meet,is peppermint essence, and Coulson knows his synaesthesia has no way of distinguishing good from bad, but  _peppermint_ , it's such an innocuous flavor that he's just a little inclined to give Cal the benefit of the doubt. Cal slices Trip's artery, and Coulson remembers, forcefully, that peppermint is sharp and bitter and strong. "Hang in there, Trip," he tells him, and the peppermint fades to biscuits with honey, like drinking a cup of mint tea along with some fresh Southern baking.  _  
_

  
When Trip dies, Coulson tastes nothing but biscuits and honey for days (not true, he thinks, there's always the flavor of chocolate lingering in his mouth, now. He's said  _Skye_ so often it sticks. He doesn't even have to say it. He just thinks of her and it's there. Skye dying didn't change it, and her transformation hasn't either). He can't speak, when he sees Trip's mother, just pulls her into a hug and finally whispers he's sorry. It feels inadequate. Skye feels responsible, he knows, but it's not her fault. It's his. Honey is bittersweet in his mouth.

 

 

"I'm leaving," Mack says, looks torn between resolute and genuinely regretful, and Coulson doesn't attempt to talk him around, even though  _Mack_  is bread hot and fragrant from the oven. (He wonders if Mack and Hunter know, if they feel the connection that makes  _Hunter_ the taste of butter melting, but maybe it's not a connection at all. Coulson doesn't know how this works, he just knows what he knows.)

(He's known Bobbi Morse for years before he died, so  _Bobbi_ or  _Barbara_ or  _Agent Morse_  isn't any kind of flavor, but he does wonder, too, if  _Bobbi_  would be strawberry preserves, or if he's just romanticizing in a terribly unprofessional way. Bread and butter and strawberry jam, god, he's being a stupid old man.)

 

 

"Jiaying's my mom," Skye tells him, and  _oh_ , but  _Jiaying_ tastes like Sichuan pepper, tingling and numb on his lips, and Coulson marvels that Cal and Jiaying, all sharp edges and bitterness and pepper fire, created  _Skye_. 

(When he grabs the crystal, it hurts, of course it hurts, but for a moment, first, as his fingers turn to stone, they tingle the way his mouth did with Jiaying's name, and then they go numb, and then, then there's pain.) 

 

 

"I'm gonna start going by Daisy, I think," Skye says, and she says it so casually, standing at his side as they're looking at the reports on his screen, but Coulson can read Skye so easily these days (always could, actually, but so much  _more_ , now that they're working together like this). He nods, turns his head to her, and  _oh_ , the way her shorter hair frames her jawline is exquisite, he thinks.

 _Daisy_  is nothing in his mouth, and  _Skye_  is still milk chocolate, but Coulson's getting frustrated with himself regardless, because names are important, and Skye - Daisy - chose this, and he should be able to get it right. The rest of the team get it right, every time, and he can feel them roll their eyes every time he doesn't. 

 

 

With Simmons gone,  _Fitz_ isn't lemons in sunshine anymore, he's lemon pith bitter with grief and loss, and Coulson can't change it but he knows it's not healthy. "I have to tell Simmons' family she's MIA," he says, and god, if Jemma's dead then why does her name still taste of rosemary all woody pine resin? _Rosemary for remembrance_ , he thinks, and misses Simmons fiercely, and throws away all the dried rosemary they have in the kitchen.

 

 

"Phil," Skye - Daisy - has started saying, and Coulson wouldn't correct her now. They're both leaders of the team. She deserves to call him by a name that puts her on a level with him, the way May does (used to, he corrects, because May's gone). (And anyway, it's a concession, he thinks, maybe, a concession that she calls him Phil every time he calls her Skye.) 

(She says it with such satisfied joy, though, that he wonders what "Phil" tastes like, in her mouth.) 

"Skye-" he says, pauses, frowns in frustration. "Sorry. Daisy. Sorry." She laughs, runs her fingers through her hair, shrugs. 

"It's fine, Phil," she tells him, but it's not. 

"It's your  _name_ ," he says, and his hands shake. "I should be able to get it right." Sk- _Daisy_ gives him a long look, raises an eyebrow.

"Do you need me to teach you?" she asks, and takes the tablet out of his hands in a way that he'd find condescending, if it were anyone else (he can  _do it_ , until he can't do it, and Skye -  _Daisy goddamn it Daisy_  - can do it, for him, because she's  _Skye_. Daisy. Skye.)

"I-" he says, inarticulate and tongue-tied, and she steps into his space, whispers in his ear. 

"Hi, Phil. I'm Daisy."

"Daisy," he repeats, and she touches his arm, just above the connection point.

"Yeah," she says, "like that. I like how you say my name, Phil. Daisy." She leans in, closer, until her mouth is almost brushing his. Phil can see all of the shades of amber in her eyes, her lashes long and soft and so close he feels like they must sweep against his skin if she blinks. " _Daiiii_ sy," she says, sing-song, and her breath is warm against his lips. 

"Daisy," he breathes, and his mouth is full of cinnamon sugar, vanilla frosting. "Daisy," he says again, and the cinnamon intensifies. Daisy smiles, leans in even closer. 

"Again," she demands, and her lips are brushing his now. 

" _Daisy_ ," Coulson whispers into her mouth, drags his tongue over her lip, and he doesn't know whether she can taste the cinnamon sugar but she's kissing him anyway, kissing him gentle and soft and delicious. 

 

 

( _Skye_ , Coulson tries later, just to check, and it's like a ghost of chocolate on his tongue.) 

**Author's Note:**

> I literally have no idea I just decided "but what if Phil had name-based synaesthesia tho" 
> 
> (Daisy Johnson: literal pure cinnamon roll)
> 
> follow me on tumblr if you want: notcaycepollard.tumblr.com


End file.
